Amina Cachalia & Rica Hodgson INTERVIEW EXCERPT

Both women have known Nelson Mandela and Winnie for decades; when he was underground, Hodgson sometimes took Winnie to be with Nelson. [Note: The first part of this interview is with Cachalia; Hodgson joins it later.]

Regarding Winnie ... do you recall that incident when the house burnt down
in Soweto ...

Yes, I remember that very well ... I got into the car and drove out to the
house. When I got there everything was in cinders, just blackened out. Dozens
of papers were burnt and photographs ...

She wasn't around at all. I asked where she was and they told me they'd take
me to see her. We got back into the car and went off to some part of Soweto ...
Winnie was sitting in a chair looking absolutely ghastly, as though she was in
a different world. I said to her, "Winnie, what on earth has happened." She
said, "I don't know. I don't know what's happening in my life. I don't know"
...

Did you ever get any sense of what Nelson Mandela's response was to the
burning of his house?

No, I never got a response from him as such, but I do know that he was very
upset and very worried. Soon after that burning of the house, there were so
many other things happening.

I think the Stompie issue then came to the fore as well, and various other
things was happening. That is the time that he had written a little note to me
to say I must come to see him immediately. I had a feeling all along that he
might have wanted me to tell him about what was happening in Johannesburg with
Winnie and all the rumors and what the press was saying, and I didn't know
anything further than what I read in the press. Yusuf and I discussed it, and I
thought if I was going to get permission to see him, then I must know what to
tell him.

I asked some of the "Committee of Ten" to come and see me ... Albertina and
Sister Bernard came along, and I showed them the note and I said, "Look, I
don't know what this is all about. But I have a feeling Nelson wants to know
what's going on here. He feels, perhaps, I'll be the one to tell him the
correct things, and I don't know anything about what's happening to Winnie. So
you tell me and I can tell him." And Albertina said to me, "Ask him to tell
Winnie to get out of the country for a while, because she is just making a lot
of difficulties and a lot of trouble here, and she must go away. She must be
away from this country for some time, and she'll only listen if he tells her."

I said, "All right, do you think what is happening ... is Winnie really
involved?" They said, "Yes. She's terribly involved in [every]thing, and she's
making a lot of difficulties for them in the township, and she must go. She
must get out of the country." I said, "Okay. If I do go and see him, I'll tell
him that." Well, I never got to see him, because they turned me down. I never
told him that. I didn't put that in the telegram that I sent to him. I just
said, "I'm unable to come and see you. But we'll continue to try and come."

When Mandela got out of prison did people tell him this sort of thing
...

I'm sure they must have told him. But I gathered ... people were afraid to tell
Nelson the truth at times. They were afraid to upset him or to burden him more,
or what the reason was I'm not quite sure, but a lot of people, even till this
day, will not confront him or tell him things that he should know about the
truth, in a sense. They don't mean to be telling him untruths, I'm sure, but I
think they feel that they don't want to burden him ... and tell him things that
they should not really be telling him.

Do you think that he himself deliberately turned a blind eye?

I don't think he deliberately turned a blind eye, but I do think that he
believed so in Winnie that she could never have done what the press and people
were saying at the time. He believed in her thoroughly, he believed in her
innocence for a long time. Subsequently, he realized that she wasn't so
innocent, but all along at that period, he did believe in her. He asked people
to go to court to show support for her, at the time, too. In a sort of round
about way he asked me to court, also. He didn't say outright, "I want you to
come to court and give her support," but he did in a very round about way.
Anyway a lot of people did go to court. I just didn't go because I felt it
wasn't a political trial. It was a criminal trial and I wasn't going to go
either in support of Winnie or not in support of Winnie. I just didn't feel I
should go.

Were there people who came to tell him he really should separate from this
woman ...

I don't know if there were people that told him that. At that time, he probably
realized himself that he couldn't carry on living with Winnie under the same
roof. He had been treated very harshly by her, in the sense that she never went
to bed unless he was asleep, and she woke up while he was still asleep, or she
was asleep and he would wake up, so he felt that she never wanted
confrontation. She never wanted him to talk to her about anything. She never
gave him the chance to ... He still loved her tremendously, even at that time.
But I think it became unbearable for him to live under the same roof and not
being able to be honest and straightforward and talk to her.

What is so fascinating here is what is going through Mandela's mind before
he finally made the decision to separate. Did he confide in anybody at
all?

No, I don't think he confided. Nelson is a strange man in many ways. He likes
to keep a lot to himself. Because I heard that he was going to leave his home
from members of his staff and so on, that he was moving out and he was going to
live elsewhere. And he came home one afternoon for lunch, there was a meeting
at my house ... some of the ANC fellows and he was there. I said to him, "I
want to talk to you for a moment," and I took him to my bedroom. I said,
"What's this I hear you going to leave your home and going to live elsewhere?"
He said, "Who told you this?" I said, "Everybody's telling me this." He said,
"No, not true. I'm still gonna live there. I'm still living there. I still
share the home with Winnie and I share the bedroom with Winnie." But about two
weeks later he left the house. So either he didn't confide in people and me or
at that point he hadn't really decided yet. I don't know.

Did you ever see him really crushed and vulnerable during that period,
talking about Winnie or was he just too careful?

He was very careful. He controlled his feelings magnificently. He really did. I
remember when he separated from her, and he looked so absolutely sad on the
television, and I phoned him, and I couldn't get hold of him. One of his
secretaries said that he had left already ... I think it was Jessie who said,
"Auntie Amina, you must phone him. He's really down and out. He's feeling very
bad. You must phone him and talk to him." But I couldn't get hold of him at
that time. I talked to him days afterwards only, but he must have felt very
pained all that time. He looked very pained.

Do you think there was any particular incident which might have precipitated
this decision finally to separate?

There were many incidents that prompted that, but I also think, when she was
going abroad to the States and he asked her not to go. She was then taking a
friend with her, Dali ... and he specifically asked her not to do that. She
said she wouldn't. But that's the story I got, whether that was true or not,
I'm not sure. But she did take Dali with her, and I was told when he phoned her
one night, Dali answered the telephone and ... I don't know if that broke the
camel's back, but that was one of the incidents I think that upset him
tremendously. She didn't listen to him.

In the '80s, before the whole football club thing blew up, Winnie was his
alter ego outside of prison. She played an important political role, and you
were friendly with her. Can you capture that?

Undoubtedly she played a very wonderful political role because she was the
contact that we all relied on. Back and forth from days that he was on the
island even. Winnie believed then that she was the person to help the country
through the difficult times, and bring us to perhaps liberation. She changed
tremendously over those few years. She would be very arrogant to some people.
She would talk to you if she wanted to talk to you and if she didn't want to,
she didn't think anything of just leaving you standing there.

I never visited her in Brandfort. First of all, because I was banned for many
years before, but by that time she had already decided she wasn't going to live
in Brandfort anymore, so she'd made excursions into Johannesburg quite often.
She was ill a couple of times and was also in nursing homes here. Then,
finally, she decided she wasn't going to go back there. I remember Helen Joseph
phoning me one day to say that she's at one of the nursing homes, and we should
go and see her. So I took some food and I went to visit her, and she wasn't
terribly ill, but she was there for some investigation or whatever. And she
just looked so different to me. She wasn't the same woman I had known years
before. She talked differently. She was absolutely hostile to press people and
everybody else. Then she decided she was going to go back to Brandfort for a
little while and come back, and she was never going to go back there again. She
was just going to get some stuff and come back, and that's what she did,
finally.

But subsequently she was one day taken from hospital to Ismail Ayob's house.
She wrote me a little note after that and said, "I hate being here." She said,
"If I have to choose between Section 6 [prison] and the Ayob's ... I choose
Section 6 to be under." I don't know what that was all about. But that was
Winnie, you know, she minced no words, and then she just didn't go back to
Brandfort.

I remember going with her to Sandton Hotel. One of the American television
journalists, one of the famous ones, came down, I forget his name now, wanted
an interview with her, and she went there. She said to me to bring some Indian
food ... I took her some food and she was having it there ... Winnie was
wonderful when she was talking in front of the camera, but before she went to
talk, we were in a little room by ourselves, she was lashing at just about
everybody. Talking ill of everybody around there, and then I heard the
interview, and she was perfect. Winnie has such a strange mind. She can switch
on and off at will, and she gave a wonderful interview.

Maybe that is one thing that she has in common with Mandela--the great
political self control ...

I don't know if she ever had any thorough discussions politically with him,
because she tried to see as little as possible of him since he was out of
prison, for that period that they were living together. He had people every day
of his life that he had to see and meetings to attend and setting up everything
else. So there wasn't very much time that they little time they had they ...
she kept well away from topics that would have been confrontational.

Here was Mandela going through something terribly sad and traumatic, he had
attached so much hope to her during his years in prison, and in a way she
sustained him emotionally. Despite the terrible stuff in his private life, he
still continued with his political goal and it seemed as if he was completely
unfazed by that ...

Yes, he always gave that impression. He was completely unfazed by his private
difficulties when it came to his political life it was absolutely the way he
wanted it done, and the way he put himself forward. He was brilliant at that
... he never allowed his private life to unfaze him ... even a teeny weeny bit.
He's always absolutely in control of his emotions. But his one great wish was
that he would come out of prison, and have a family life again with his wife
and the children. Because he's a great family man and I think he really wanted
that more than anything else and he couldn't have it.

You say that Winnie changed ...

... Winnie could be so wonderful one moment, and the next moment she could be
real witch in a way ... she had these conflicts in her own character. I don't
know what the cause of it was. I think along the line when she was in
Brandfort, things were very difficult for her, and something along the line
might have snapped. She became very difficult. I was told she had turned to
alcohol. I had never seen her drunk, but there were all kinds of stories at
that time. But most certainly she behaved differently, on many occasions, from
the woman I had known all the years before.

Tell us about the woman you had known all the years before.

I first met her when he brought her to the treason trial one day. At the old
Drill Hall. They weren't married yet. She was a beautiful young woman and he
brought her and introduced her to everybody there. We sat listening to the
proceedings and then when he married her, we were invited to the wedding in the
Transkei, but we couldn't go. A few days later, when they came back, he brought
her to my flat to introduce her again to Yusuf and me. She was so different
from the Winnie I knew afterwards. She was wonderfully shy and sort of coy in a
way. Beautiful, and didn't have much to say for herself, and Nelson did a lot
of the talking.

She carried on like that for some time, until she became politically active.
After his sentence, she really became politically active, and we worked
together in the Federation of South African Women. She was a very able and very
wonderful woman all along. She did everything correctly. She was outspoken. She
was a wonderful speaker when she addressed the crowds. She could whip up a lot
of emotion. She was still a very beautiful young woman, and very easy to talk
to and get along with. That sort of thing didn't happen in the '80s ... after
that, it was difficult to understand Winnie and her whole manner of life then
was completely different.

During those first years, she was something of a blushing bride, maybe a bit
of a wide eyed country girl in the big city. Would that be an
exaggeration?

Well, that might have been it, but she was a very able young bride also. But
she learned very quickly the ways of life of the city. She also got into
political life very easily, and realized what she had to do, what commitment
she had to make, and she did. She did that very ably. But I think the
banishment in Brandfort had a lot to do with her complete change within herself
... it was a very harsh period for her. Something went wrong along the way.

You said Mandela dreamed of resuming a family life, but he'd had enough
run-ins with Winnie, even when she came to visit him in prison beforehand, to
have had a whiff of what was going on ...

Well, I'm sure he may have had those doubts a little bit, but I also think that
he felt once he's out of prison, he would get the family together and things
would come right again. He always sort of blamed himself for Winnie's ways ...
the forays that she went into and so on. He felt that he was never there to
guide her, never there to be with her, and she never had any guidance from him,
and he felt responsible for that. All along, even when the trial took place, he
still felt that he was to blame for whatever she had done wrong.

Which in a way may be paternalistic.

Ja, well, I think that is the chauvinistic traits in African men and Indian
men, for that matter. You always want to take control of your household and the
women there and so on. But I have a feeling that he so wanted to just get his
children and his wife in a home, and continue his political career with her,
but have this wonderful home life that he dreamt of all the years in prison.

Do you think that he was right to blame himself?

I don't know, perhaps, he could blame himself to an extent, but I don't think
... I mean there were so many other women in the political movement whose
husbands spent years and years in prison, and they came out unscathed from
their difficulties, didn't get into enormous difficulty as Winnie found herself
in. So Nelson is being a little bit too blaming ... as far as he is concerned
and he takes the blame far too much. Winnie, in some cases, knew exactly what
she wanted, and sometimes Winnie felt that Nelson was never going to be out of
prison, and that she was going to be the leader of South Africa. I think she
really had those ideas, perhaps, tucked away somewhere. She threw all caution
to the wind sometimes, precisely because she felt that she would be the person
to lead South Africa.

You said that Winnie had the sense, before Mandela's release, that she was
going to be the leader of South Africa ...

Oh yes, I mean she must have been very happy that he had been released from
jail, but also it seemed to have dampened her wishes to be the leader, the
queen bee, in a sense. She definitely had ideas that she was the woman to lead
South Africa to a new life, and to be the head of the government, perhaps. She
didn't think that Nelson, at the age that he was coming out, would be able to
do that. She was happy that he was out, undoubtedly, but I think it dampened
her ideas a little bit.

Was she surprised when Nelson [separated from her]?

I don't know. I didn't meet her during that period at all. We haven't been good
friends for a long time ... I don't know if she was shocked, surprised or hurt.
He was very pained to make that statement, but I don't know how she took it ...
I know later on, a lot of people, friends of hers, used to say that they must
get together again ... when he is going to be the leader of South Africa, the
president of South Africa, we must have a first lady, and only Winnie can be
that first lady. A lot of friends kept saying so. In fact, I was told at one of
the ANC conferences ... when they greeted each other on the stage, there was
such a roar from a section of the public, that gave the impression that they
should get together again. I think Winnie, perhaps, deep down or secretly,
hoped that they would. That's my impression. I don't know if she did, but I
think she secretly did hope that they should get together, because she realized
that he was going to be the president of South Africa, and the man that the
whole country wanted to be the ...

Knowing Mandela well, did you think that was a possibility that after the
separation announcement that he might have gone back on it?

I don't know. He never really spoke about it afterwards. I mean, he lived down
in Houghton. He was quite happy and he realized that there was no getting back
with Winnie. But it was strange, I personally thought that at some stage they
might still get together, because I knew how much he loved her always, and it
was very difficult for that love just to be wiped away. I also thought that
perhaps they would get together at some stage.

But the day we went to see the old woman, Betsy Verwoerd, we were coming back
from there ... by car ... and he was sitting very quietly and almost snoozing
and I said to him, "Are you tired?" He said, "No I'm not tired. I'm just
thinking" ... and two days later he announced that he was going to divorce her.
I just felt that he was making up his mind at that time or before, that he was
thinking about the divorce and what he was going to do.

There you were in the car, he was thinking about it, it was the perfect
opportunity [for him] just to let go ...

I don't know. He didn't say
anything at all about that to me. But somehow I felt I could read his thoughts,
in a way, and soon after that he announced his divorce. But that is Mandela ...
there's a wall that he's built between him and everybody. Sometimes he lets
slip something along the way, but in most cases he's so controlled about his
feelings that it's difficult to penetrate that wall.

It's fascinating that you should say that. Even with an old chum like you ...
is that maybe what makes him most different from other people ...

Yes, I think it does ... he's different, he can joke and be just like ordinary
people are and yet, when it comes to a very personal thing, one would imagine
that with your friends, or with your very close relation, you would let go, and
talk about these things. But he doesn't.

RICA HODGSON joins the interview ...

Winnie and Nelson, together in the early days, do you remember seeing them
together?

Hodgson: Oh, absolutely. Yes. I remember very clearly, shortly after
they got married, and they must have both been at my house for a meal, and I
said to Nelson, "I've never eaten a real African meal. I would like to eat a
real African meal." He said, "Okay, you're invited. Come to my home next Sunday
and have lunch with us." So we duly went, and what was prepared for
lunch--roast chicken and roast potatoes, and peas, and tinned peaches and
cream. I mean, the same lunch that I would have given them almost. So I said,
"So where's the African food?" Nelson said, "What do you want me to do? Go and
grub for roots for you? What do you want me to give you?" They were very happy
together, and I mean those occasions when I used to take Winnie to be with him,
that they could have time alone together, they were really very, very deeply in
love. I mean, he yearned so much for her. I felt very sorry for her and later
too, as I thought it's terrible for a young and beautiful woman to be deprived
like that ...

...

Hodgson: I think one instance that strikes me is when Winnie was on trial, and she was
at that stage with this man Dali, who was also her legal advisor. Nelson was
going to the court one day, and we met in the lift and he said, "When are you
going to go to court?" I said, "No, I don't think I want to go to court." So he
said, "You must. Please Rica, you must come to court and give support to
Winnie." Now I mean really, she was so blatant with this man. I went and
regretted it. I never went again. But that was the kind of man that Nelson was.
Yes, absolutely different. Where would another man have cared, you know.

You mean above and beyond the call of duty.

Hodgson: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, why did he single me out that I
should go? I regretted, really regretted having gone, because the way she was
behaving with this young man in front of Nelson. I just thought it was too
terrible. But he is such a forgiving guy ... I mean yes, there may be the
political angles, there are, of course, but he is a very forgiving person, and
a loving person, and a warm person.

Hodgson: He is loving and warm and joking and has charmed all of us in
different ways. Yet, he does seem to inhabit a different sort of
dimension.

Cachalia: He is a loner. He's intensely protective of his inner thoughts
and ideas, that he will not divulge. And his personal life he is very
protective of. He now and again lets slip something, but on the whole, he'll
never let that wall crack.